Q&A

How does it work?

We rename subway stations after the Instagram hashtag which is most popular around them. So you get a pretty good picture of how the city is photographed and what is going on where – especially for travelling, shopping, drinks and food.

Sure, just make sure there is a credit referring to our website. As a journalist you can also use them for articles about our project. If you want to use or print our maps for other purposes (e. g. guide books) please get in touch with us first.

Wait a second! How exactly do the stations get their new names?

Mainly automatically, but with a bit of editorial choice. We calculate the most significant hashtag which is used around each station, usually within 300 meters. But if this hashtag is just the station’s or the neighborhood’s name we go for the next one. For instance in Paris the most significant hashtag at Louvre is #louvre. We manually chose #monalisa instead.

Nice one. Any other editorial decisions?

When a hashtag refers to an event which is not repeated each year at the same place, we skipped it too (it happened to #aiweiwei in a couple of cities, sorry about that).

All very nice, but I am a bit into mathematics – what do you mean by significant?

Largest deviation from average frequency of respective hashtag across all stations.

Actually, I am more interested in who designed the maps, because they look great!

They were designed by Jug Cerović, a Parisian architect and map designer who has developed a pretty clever, universal standard for subway maps.

Oh, this looks great, but he has maps of so many more cities, not just the ones with hashtag stations. Are there any other cities coming for #tagsandthecity?

Oh, wait, wait! I have some kind of sushi restaurant, it is called #sushi24 and I want to have my hashtag on the map. What can I do?

Well, make sure to take at least one hundred photos, otherwise you will not make it into the top 100. All photos need geotags. Oh, and you need a new Instagram account for each photo, because we count only one photo per user. But …

No problem, I will do that, I really want to have a station named after my #sushi24!

Wait, sorry, we only count photos from 2014.

Maybe you are going to update the maps? I can wait!

No, sorry. Instagram restricted access to it’s data so we can no longer get the data we need. The data will always be from 2014. Why didn’t you just serve good food people like to share in the first place?

Good question. We are #sushi24, so …

I see, yes.

Who are you, by the way?

My name is Tin Fischer and I am a journalist working in Berlin, often doing data analysis. You can check out my website and blog for other stuff we have done using Instagram data. My favorite sushi place is Ishin.

If you are interested in map design, check out Jug’s book/app One Metro World. It includes all the maps which are the basis for #tagsandthecity.And if you like Instagram data analysis in general (and if you understand German), you might like David’s and Tin’s book Nach dem Wochenende bin ich erst mal #krank.